Description

Blair Witch, Volume I: Rustin Parr, the first of three games based on Blair Witch folklore, takes its name from a character mentioned only briefly in the movie. Parr was arrested for the ritualistic murders of seven children in 1941. You play as Elspeth "Doc" Holliday, an agent for a secret government agency called "Spookhouse". She is dispatched to Burkittsville, Maryland weeks after Parr's execution to see if there is any truth to the claims of supernatural forces at work there.

By day Elspeth will talk to the locals, attempting to befriend them and get any useful information about the investigation out of them. At night she will travel through the expansive woods surrounding Burkittsville, dispatching a never ending swarm of monsters as she searches for more clues as to the source of the aberrations. As an agent of Spookhouse Elspeth has access to a wide range of advanced weaponry that ghosts and monsters are vulnerable to, but often it is better to run than fight.

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Trivia

Continuity errors

When you finally meet up with Robin Weaver, she's holding a civil war uniform which she says belonged to a man named Lazarus (the protagonist of Blair Witch, Volume II: The Legend of Coffin Rock). However, if you play Blair Witch II, Lazarus' uniform is destroyed through burning by Weaver's granny near the beginning of the game because it was caked with blood (not to mention 20 years old). So much for continuity.

A bigger breach of continuity occurs with Blair Witch, Volume III: The Elly Kedward Tale. During the first game Holliday somehow contacts Jonathan Prye across time. Prye helps Holliday by leaving his journal about the Blair Witch in a safe place for her to find. None of this actually happens in the third game.

Engine

Well before the game's release, there were all sorts of interesting bits of stuff floating arount the internet. One item was that the game would be utilizing the Unreal engine. This is, and always was, completely false. The game does, however, utilize the engine from Nocturne.

Lens flare effect

The back cover of the box and the CD case has a screenshot showing off the lens flare effect from the flashlight, one of the features which distinguished the Nocturne engine. However in the actual game the lens flare effect is disabled, considerably watering down the flashlight beam's appearance. It is possible to re-enable it by editing the game's .ini file, but the Terminal Reality tech support advise against it for stability reasons, stating it could crash your game, erase your save files, and even possibly wipe your BIOS (although the last one's a bit of a stretch).

Nocturne

Blair Witch, Volume I is (for all intents and purposes) Nocturne Act V. "Doc" Holliday is in the starring role with the Stranger as a supporting character and cameos by Svetlana, Col Hapscomb, and the Spookhouse staff.

References

In Burkittsville's general store, a few interesting boxes can be seen on top of a counter. These are two of Terminal Reality's games; Nocturne and Fly!.